The Documentary Conversation
Last winter I wrote the long essay The Documentary Deficit, commissioned by Dutch Doc (Dutch Documentary Photography Foundation) and FotografenFederatie, on the state of the documentary photography debate in The Netherlands. I posted the English version of my essay at my page at academia.edu where you can read it in full. In addition to the long essay , in which I try to grapple with the slippery issue of the definition of documentary (photography), I wrote a mini-essay which accompanied Dutch Doc’s exhibition showing all 34 longlisted projects for the Dutch Doc Award 2014, at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, 23 May – 6 July 2014.
The Documentary Conversation
How does a photojournalist differ from a documentary photographer? The latter not only collects a series of photographs about a certain theme, but also approaches his subject based on a research question, a concept and a personal perspective. Perhaps the opposition between ‘to react’ and ‘to begin’ will cast a new light on the matter. A photojournalist supposedly reacts, while the documentary photographer initiates. He takes up a task, an inquiry, negotiations; he gets a conversation going.
A good documentary – whether it is presented as a film, a photo project or a hybrid format – is not merely a self-determined and visually intelligent report of an inquiry, but is above all part of a conversation. A conversation which the documentary maker conducts between himself and his subject (often one or more persons), recorded by the camera, whose key role allows us to become a part of the conversation ourselves.
What makes the documentary special as a free art form and as (audio-)visual statement of an encounter, is that it makes us participate in a conversation. That is: if the public shows willingness to be deeply engaged and is willing to read and look slowly. Documentary does not offer infotainment or entertainment, on the contrary, it offers a form demanding concentration and immersion. It is not pedagogical per se, but can educate nonetheless: not just about a subject, but also how a documentary maker sees the world, listens to and looks at other people, and about how that experience is transmitted by means of images and words.
Unlike documentary film documentary photo projects are given shape in many ways. Often combined with multiple formats, like the book – still the most used medium today –, the Zine or magazine, the exhibition, an app for tablets, a website or a multimedia-installation. Also documentary’s mode of presentation is increasingly ‘fluid’. A good example being the interactive, audio-visual online documentary, in which a range of media – photography, film, audio, written non-fiction and sometimes even gaming – melt into one another. As technological applications become cheaper and cheaper, many new challenges are posed for the documentary maker. Reaching an audience is no longer of great difficult, but keeping an audience’s attention and engagement with the documentary conversation continues to be.
It is a responsibility of documentary makers as well as the public to sustain a conversation about the potential and the value of documentary photography. To what extent is it still the most appropriate form to subtly bring urgent issues into the open? After all, the documentary offers a sanctuary for the democratic conversation about ‘the world’, and how we relate to such an abstract concept. Despite having much ground in common with neighbouring disciplines, documentary is not Art, not journalism, not advertisement, not propaganda, not historiography and not science. Documentary is its own form, which is resilient precisely because of its indefinability and shortcomings.
(April-May 2014)
2011-2023